8 mistakes to avoid when creating buyer personas

Everyone should have understood it by now: you cannot develop a marketing and communication plan without having first created the buyer personas .

Knowing the target customer in depth is essential to be able to offer him what he is looking for and to guide him to buy your product rather than that of the competition.

If the goal is to be very effective in telling our potential client what it takes to convince him that we are the best solution for him, then it is clear that it takes just as much precision and accuracy in discovering his real needs, his behaviors, what that really interests him.

All of this can only be achieved through a true representation of his character.

So let's see what mistakes to avoid in order not to risk doing a lot of work and ending up with buyer personas that are not very useful because they are inaccurate and not well focused on the key elements that we need to know instead.

8 mistakes not to make

Here is the list of what not to do to avoid wasting time and making mistakes when creating your buyer personas.

You've probably done at least one of these, so take note and run for cover.

1. Create lots of buyer personas

How many times have I been asked "how many buyer personas should I create?"

There is no answer, it depends on the company, the type of business, the type of customer that is more "profitable" for us. I realize that this term is not polite, but let's face it, we are all interested in acquiring "good customers", rather than difficult customers, who drive us crazy and make us earn little or nothing.

So start with the primary buyer persona – the main one, who best embodies the average characteristics of the customer – then check the differences and evaluate, data in hand, how many buyer personas it is useful to develop.

Try to avoid overlapping insights, because this would also lead to a repetition of content with consequent waste of time and effectiveness.

Basically, create only the buyer personas that are really needed.

2. Focus on unprofitable customers

I tend to call them secondary buyer personas and then classify them as potential customers that I don't want to invest in now or ever.

Basically I identify what are often defined as negative buyer personas.

I generally keep them in consideration because to all intents and purposes they are people who could buy my product or service, but since I realize that they are of little use to the growth of my business, I don't invest resources to acquire them.

It is said, however, that this situation will not change over time, so I keep them in the drawer because… you never know.

3. Based only on your own ideas and assumptions

Personal experience greatly affects our thinking, which is why we are inclined to believe that what we know is right.

Our vision often does not correspond to reality and it is said that what we think we know about our customers is truthful and exhaustive.

Too many times have I been told, when faced with a specific question asked of my client on some insight or on phases of the purchasing process, that he didn't have the answer. Yet a moment earlier he had assured me that he knew everything about his clients "after 20 years of activity".

After so many meetings and consultations on buyer personas, I can reasonably assert that people are convinced that they know everything about their customers until they find out what they need to know about them.

4. Assume that account managers know everything about customers

It's true, salespeople are always in contact with customers and one is therefore led to believe that they know everything about them.

In reality, it is said that they are not aware of all the information we need to develop the best marketing and communication strategy.

Very often they have a clear view of some aspects of their customers, but lack of information in other areas, for example on the research phase of their purchasing decision-making process, or on those which in the Eureka! are called Urgent Needs.

Certainly drawing on the voice and thought of those directly involved is more exhaustive than relying on the voice of a third party, however professional he may be.

5. Prioritize the profile of the buyer persona

I know that the eye wants its part and that it has a decidedly relevant role in communication, but appearance without substance has important limits in terms of effectiveness.

What I'm trying to tell you is that the beautiful graphics you find online to represent buyer personas, in most cases, are not as exhaustive in the information they contain.

The data they report is too concise to be able to give sufficient voice to the insights of a potential customer and his purchasing decision-making process.

Knowing demographic data and little else can give us an idea of who our interlocutor is, but it does not provide us with the notions useful for having a fruitful dialogue with him.

6. Focus on the product or service

Apparently everyone agrees that we must focus on the customer, that today's marketing is customer centric, that the time of "push" methods is over because people today want to choose independently.

Yet companies still have the tendency to think first about their offer and then about the customer. They launch products without making sure that the market accepts them positively, they introduce new unsolicited features, they create offer packages that people don't want to buy, they offer services that potential customers don't understand and don't appreciate.

Certainly the effort of analyzing the customer is demanding, but before going to market it is necessary if you don't want to make mistakes that can cost you dearly.

7. Create buyer personas without an overview

Using your head is a must in every area, even when developing buyer personas.

I have often supported the concept that buyer personas arise from the analysis of insights and their grouping, not from an a priori segmentation.

I am convinced of this and have always pushed on this element above all because the working method that I have seen applied is exactly the opposite, that is, a variable number of profiles are identified "by eye", to then go looking for insights.

No rule is absolute, but it must be contextualized, therefore it must be the overall analysis of the situation that directs us towards a preventive or a posteriori segmentation.

Among other things, who tells us that the buyer persona developed on a specific corporate role shouldn't be split into two buyer personas because the insights relating to that role at a young age are different from the same ones at an older age?

I'll explain. Does the fifty-year-old technical manager of a dairy consortium have the same or different insights from a thirty-year-old in the same role?

If the answer is yes, there will be two buyer personas, the answer is no, there will be only one.

8. Don't update buyer personas

The world runs fast and the markets even faster, accustomed to riding the wave of digital and technological innovations. People change their habits according to the news that comes out every day and this doesn't just happen to the younger generations.

The methods of accessing information evolve and people move fluidly on digital platforms, choosing whether or not to attend online and offline groups and communities.

Everything changes and what happened a year ago does not necessarily happen today, which is why a continuous update of the buyer personas is important.

Certainly the initial work is more demanding, while the revision work will be easier, but if done consistently it will lead to an increasingly in-depth and specific knowledge of potential customers.

Conclusions

Buyer persona stands for "potential customer", which in turn stands for "company growth"; it is evident that the concept cannot be trivialized and reduced to a profile with a fictitious name and face surrounded by a little concise information.

Creating buyer personas is a demanding but very useful job that must be done with criteria, avoiding making mistakes that can cost you dearly.